Length without purpose

Press, 12 September 1987, Page 27

Length without purpose

Brazil. By Errol Lincoln Uya. Pan, 1987. 1000 pp. $14.95 (paperback). (Reviewed by Margaret Quigley) My dutiful reading of the one thousand closely printed pages of this overweight paperback left me cross at the waste of time, and curious about two things. The first is why so many American novelists believe that quantity implies quality- John Steinbeck, in the journal he kept while writing “East of Eden,” said that he wanted it to be a big book which would drive a wedge into the reader’s mind and thus leave a lasting impression. It seems a trifle unfair to blame Steinbeck for all the monstrous novels which have lumbered out of the United States since that statement — perhaps it is just that their perpetrators all subscribe to the American “big is beautiful” creed. “East of Eden” was a big book, but there was a reason for its length, and it was well-crafted and beautifully written. So many of the others,

including this first novel from Errol Lincoln Uys, seem to have length with no purpose (or was his purpose simply to reach the 1000-page mark?), no craftsmanship and no style. “Brazil” is divided into six books, plus a prologue and epilogue, and any one of these could have formed the basis of a reasonable novel. Uys has simply attempted too much. He tries to cover five centuries of this huge country’s turbulent history, linking the years together by concentrating on individuals from two imaginary families. With so vast a time scale and so many characters the readers’ interest is soon lost, dissipated in catalogues of unknown names, descriptions of endless battles, tortures, rapes and murders, and pages of undigested historical background. The second thing I was curious about as I finished this book was who (besides a conscientious reviewer) will actually bother to read it